“It’s a really great opportunity that I never even thought was possible,” she said.

Rochetti unveiled her piece alongside seven other student musicians at the Fordham Composers Concert, held on May 1 at Fordham Lincoln Center’s 12th-Floor Lounge. The annual event is the culmination of a semester’s work, where students develop their new pieces with top professionals who rehearse, provide advice, and ultimately perform the compositions for a live audience.  

Working at a Professional Level 

The Fordham Composers Workshop is a one-of-a-kind combination of theory and practice designed to give undergraduate students the experience of creating an original concert work at the professional level. Each student is assigned a different ensemble of three instruments to write for, culminating in a five-minute piece played on some combination of flute, clarinet, oboe, violin, or cello. 

The students then workshop the piece through multiple drafts which are read and played throughout the semester by members of the Exponential Ensemble —a chamber music collective made up of some of the most in-demand musicians in the New York City region.

“We’re working with professional musicians,” said Daniel Ott, D.M.A., associate professor of music theory and composition and chair of the art history and music department, who teaches the class. “It’s a really rare opportunity to get that hands-on experience when you’re a student.”

The format of the class is both lecture and workshop, as Ott spends half of the class time outlining classical composition principles and techniques. The other half allows students to engage directly with the instrumentalists, who offer insights and critiques on everything from the sonic impact of a key change to the proper way to notate specialty sounds like a flute growl.

“It’s not like any other regular class,” said Elena Smith, a senior music major at Fordham College at Rose Hill. “The structure of it is really different. It’s more interactive.”

Opening New Possibilities

The first Composers Workshop class was held in 2013. Since then, the small performances in the 50-seat Veronica Lally Kehoe Studio Theatre have grown to become an integral and vital part of artistic life on campus. In 2018, the final concert had its largest attendance to date when the student composers’ pieces were inspired by artworks from Fordham visual arts students. In 2020, during the pandemic, student works were still performed by the musicians despite their having to do so online —a monumental task that involved separate recordings of each part for every piece.

The class continues to be a highlight for students who relish the opportunity to combine academic rigor with personal expression.

“You just have complete creative freedom to create whatever you want with your music,” said Henry Domenici, a senior music major. “I really have enjoyed the opportunity to get to do that for a class.” 

Five new state-of-the-art music rooms will be available to students next year, along with a completely renovated and expanded visual arts wing. Construction will begin this summer and the new spaces will be unveiled in the fall.

Modern, Spacious Facilities for Visual Arts

The visual arts space will see a complete overhaul of its existing classrooms and studios located on the first floor of the Lowenstein Center at 60th Street and Columbus Avenue. The improvements will include updated furniture, more open layouts, and new state-of-the-art lighting fixtures. There will also be a brand new seminar room and a large increase in storage space to support more ambitious and varied exhibitions. The space will be anchored by the Lipani Gallery, which features solo and group exhibitions of student work as well as work by professional artists, architects, and designers.

Improvements like these will vastly enhance the opportunities available to all students and allow the gallery to operate at a professional level, according to Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, associate clinical professor of photography and head of the visual arts program.

“Creativity is one of the major aspects that people of the future need in order to discern opportunities, where others do not see anything,” he said about the benefits of access to the arts. “When you put artists, actors, and musicians all in proximity to one another with an espresso machine, something’s bound to happen.”

The Father Grimes Music Center

The music department will also be joining the updated wing, with a suite of five brand new rooms that will make up the Father Grimes S.J. Music Center—named in honor of Robert Grimes, S.J., the dean emeritus of Fordham College at Lincoln Center.

“It enriches the life of the community so much,” Grimes, a former professor of ethnomusicology, said by phone about the increased footprint of music on campus. The project was funded in part by private donors and alumni, who were eager to honor Grimes’ contributions to music at Fordham.

The plan features two private practice rooms, two ensemble rooms for bands and small groups, and one large rehearsal room that will house Fordham’s performance ensembles as well as specialty courses like the Fordham Composers Workshop.

These enhanced facilities will also be outfitted with recording capabilities and technological updates like the Wenger VAE Rehearsal System—a playback process that allows students to change the sound of the room to mimic different environments such as a cathedral, auditorium, or recital hall.

“I’m excited that the school is making an investment in the arts on this campus, and that it is translating directly into something our students can take advantage of,” said Daniel Ott, D.M.A., associate professor of music theory and composition and chair of the art history and music department. “I want the students to feel recognized in that way, and I think this does that.”

For the Whole Community

The project is being spearheaded by Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center.

When Auricchio began planning for this project by sending out a student survey soliciting a wishlist for new music spaces, she expected a few dozen responses at most.

Instead, hundreds of students answered—and the majority were not music majors.

“Students are interested in music and art, whether as a vocation or not,” Auricchio said. “I truly believe that music and art does have an impact on their well-being. Creative expression is really necessary, and contributes to the mental health of our students.”

In One-Track Mind: Capitalism, Technology, and the Art of the Pop Song, Fordham history professor Asif Siddiqi, Ph.D., and 15 other writers attempt to answer those questions. They each delve into the history of a song from the past 60-plus years, and their essays, Siddiqi writes, “show the undiminished power of the pop song.” He sees them as “distillations of important flashpoints,” and he hears in them “ghostly echoes that persist undiminished but transform[ed] for succeeding generations.”

The idea for the book blossomed at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus in June 2019. That’s when the University’s O’Connell Initiative on the Global History of Capitalism provided funding for a workshop where Siddiqi and other contributors began to flesh out the cultural reflections they noticed in pop songs across the decades.

“We knew that there were a couple of running themes,” said Siddiqi, the book’s editor. “One was that technology was everywhere, not only in terms of recording studios [and instruments] but also media, like CDs and streaming, etc. And the other thing that was everywhere was, of course, capitalism, because of the business of making music.”

Siddiqi, a former Guggenheim Fellow, is best known for his books on the history of space exploration, including The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857–1957. But he is also a guitar player and music lover with a keen interest in the technology of music production.

He said he was wary of gravitating too far toward the kind of classic rock often seen as the canon by fans and critics, so he encouraged contributors to highlight a diversity of artists and sounds. Their selections run the gamut from Afropop to hip-hop and span nearly five decades, from “Indépendance Cha Cha,” the 1960 Congolese anthem by Le Grand Kallé and African Jazz, to M.I.A.’s 2007 hit, “Paper Planes.”

Along with Siddiqi, four other Fordham professors or graduates wrote essays for the book, which was published last fall as part of Routledge’s Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series.

“Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin

Esther Liberman Cuenca, Ph.D., GSAS ’19, a medieval historian, wrote about Led Zeppelin’s obsession with medievalism, evident in the J.R.R. Tolkien references and Viking allusions in their lyrics—the latter most prominent in 1970’s “Immigrant Song.” With its hard-charging riff and wordless, wailing chorus, the song “made an ideal conduit through which ideas about the medieval world of the Vikings were communicated in popular culture,” Liberman Cuenca writes.

Inspired by a triumphant stop the band made in Iceland on their way to the Bath Festival in England, the swaggering machismo of the track was in part simple braggadocio about their “conquest” of foreign music markets, but Liberman Cuenca notes that there may have been a bit of British tongue-in-cheek humor in the band’s nod to colonization.

“Led Zeppelin’s particular brand of medievalism,” she writes, “banked on a type of nostalgia for an idyllic, rural Britain reflecting the postwar, post-industrial anxieties that many British youth in the 1960s and 1970s experienced. … For the British, the failed [Viking] colony of Vinland represented their fears of how carefully calibrated imperial projects could fail.”

“Rebel Rebel” by David Bowie

The capitalist spirit of the music industry—and its focus on reaching foreign markets—is on full display in Fordham English professor Glenn Hendler’s essay on David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” from 1974.

While the best-known version of the song, from the album Diamond Dogs, is a fairly straightforward rock song, Bowie decided he wanted to incorporate the sounds of Latin music for the U.S. single. In the mid-1970s, though, with album-oriented rock—and its mostly white purveyors—dominating FM radio playlists, the prominence of castanets and congas in the U.S. single meant that it was relegated to the AM dial, where listeners would find almost all non-rock (and non-white) sounds. And while that version still managed to crack the Billboard Hot 100 chart, it was replaced by the U.K. version after several months.

“The marketing did not match the product,” Hendler writes, “at least not in a context in which rock was being starkly differentiated from soul music, R&B, dance music, and Latin music. The U.S. single of ‘Rebel Rebel’ largely fell between the cracks of race, culture, format, and genre. The shape of those cracks would define the U.S. music market for years to come.”

“Mmmbop” by Hanson

In 1997, two decades after David Bowie released two versions of “Rebel, Rebel,” a different kind of marketing decision—opening direct lines of communication to fans via fast-growing online spaces—helped the brothers in Hanson turn their hit song “Mmmbop” into a springboard for building a devoted following, which is explored in an essay by Louie Dean Valencia, Ph.D., GSAS ’16.

Through the band’s official website and other online forums, Hanson’s fan engagement allowed the group to survive, Valencia writes. “The boy band singing about the ephemerality of relationships used digital technology to maintain their relationships with their fans—attempting to adapt to the digital era in real time.”

“Candle in the Wind 1997” by Elton John

Elton John released “Candle in the Wind 1997,” a tribute to the late Princess Diana, in September 1997, two weeks after her death. It’s an update to the 1974 version written in honor of Marilyn Monroe. In One-Track Mind,
Christine Caccipuoti, FCLC ’06, GSAS ’08, describes how the song—a massive hit and cultural phenomenon that John has protected from widespread commercial usage—tapped into the same shifting modes of consumption as Hanson’s hit “Mmmbop” did that year.

“As the still-nascent internet became a site for growing personal expression in the late 1990s,” Caccipuoti writes, “many chose to create memorial websites. … These mostly female-run sites included many of the same features: photographs of Diana, writing about the host’s personal grief, and the lyrics to ‘Candle in the Wind 1997.’”

“Paper Planes” by M.I.A.

In the book’s last chapter, Siddiqi tackles technology on the music-creation side—specifically the practice of digital sampling, which has shaped the sound of pop music in the past 30-plus years. He writes about M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” a 2007 song by a Sri Lankan–British artist that samples the Clash’s 1982 song “Straight to Hell”—itself a critique of British and American colonialism—to explore the hustles necessary to survive in the colonialized Global South.

As a cheap technology, sampling has both democratized music creation and, at times, led to more unlicensed co-opting of “global” music by established European and American artists, Siddiqi notes. But its predominant use in hip-hop points to a certain reclaiming of history.

“As with writers and historians who liberally quote from prior works, by analogy, hip-hop artists using the digital sampler invoke, echo, and cite earlier artists through mechanical reproduction,” he writes. “The digital sampler here is not simply a musical instrument, a technical artifact, it also becomes, as M.I.A. shows in ‘Paper Planes,’ a tool for writing and rewriting history for those for whom history has always been written by others.”

As a whole, One-Track Mind offers plenty of opportunities to see the way that pop songs contribute to the writing and rewriting of history.

“Every song has a life cycle from birth to out into the world,” Siddiqi said. “And to write that biography is actually to talk about a moment in time. So I think you can read these stories if you are just interested in social and cultural history. Even if you don’t know the song, it might tell you something.”

By the end of 2019, just as the virus was starting to make headlines across Asia, Devine and his frequent collaborator and producer, Chris Bracco, had begun to talk about turning those songs into an album. In early March 2020, Devine went to Bracco’s house in Connecticut, where they recorded some of album’s foundational sounds. He then planned to go through his usual quick cycle: finish recording in April, mix the album in May, master it in June, tour in the fall.

Instead, once the public health crisis made clear that traditional recording and touring would not be possible for the foreseeable future, Devine found himself with a luxury he hadn’t experienced much over his prolific career: extra time. The head of his record label, Triple Crown Records, assured him there was no rush to complete the album, which left Devine with plenty of room to experiment.

“I’m sure we would’ve made a compelling record [in 2020], but I can guarantee you, we would not have made the record we made,” Devine says. “It was nice to get some distance and perspective and come back to it with fresh ears. And I think that afforded us the opportunity to thoroughly explore every little weird thought and idea we had.”

Those weird thoughts and ideas culminated in an album that finds Devine exploring an expansive sonic landscape, with a more lush, psychedelic sound than anything he’s done on his nine previous solo records, or in his work prior to that in the band Miracle of 86. Among the reference points he cites for the album are the Beatles’ White Album, Wilco’s A Ghost is Born, and Elliott Smith’s From a Basement on the Hill—all works filled with experimental touches built atop foundations of more traditional rock and pop songwriting.

“We knew this was something we wanted to be a little bit more textured, layered, swirly, creepy,” Devine says.

A Music Career Shaped by Time at Fordham

Devine grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island and started his first band, Delusion, as a teenager. That band would become Miracle of 86, which found some success in the punk and emo scene around the turn of the millennium, touring the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and releasing three full-length albums, the first of which—2000’s Miracle of 86 (Fade Away)—came out the November of Devine’s senior year at Fordham College at Lincoln Center.

Devine had enrolled at Fordham in 1998, where he double-majored in English and communication and media studies and lived in McMahon Hall for four years. He also wrote for and became features editor of The Observer, the student newspaper based at the Lincoln Center campus. While he took his studies seriously, Devine also used his time at Fordham to develop as a solo performer. He played shows around the city and on campus, and by the time he graduated in 2001, he had to decide whether to pursue a career in journalism or focus on his music.

In a 2012 profile of Devine in The Observer, Elizabeth Stone, Ph.D., the paper’s adviser during Devine’s time and still a friend of the musician’s today, recalled him telling her, “I have to give this music thing a shot. I’ll probably do something else in a year, but I’ve got to do this music thing. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t.”

A year after graduating, Devine released his first solo album, Circle Gets the Square, on Immigrant Sun Records. The album was more personal and introspective than Devine’s work with Miracle of 86, and he continued to write and play solo shows while working day jobs. His next two albums, 2003’s Make the Clocks Move and 2005’s Split the Country, Split the Street, were both released on Triple Crown, and with them, Devine toured more extensively and grew his fan base by opening for acts like Brand New.

Since then, Devine has made a career as a prolific artist. In addition to his 10 LPs, he has released nearly a dozen EPs, several live albums, 12 split 7-inch records as part of his Devinyl Splits Series, and three albums as part of Bad Books, a project he started with Andy Hull of the band Manchester Orchestra. And over the years, along with numerous headlining tours, he has opened for artists like the Get Up Kids and Bright Eyes and played festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Lollapalooza.

While his path to music industry success differed from those of his peers who started touring widely as teenagers and forewent college, Devine says that his time at Fordham was an important part of his development not only as a person but as a songwriter.

“I feel like it was an immersive environment through which to learn ways to interpret and interpolate the world,” he says of his college experience, recalling a piece of journalism advice he got in a class with Professor Joseph Dembo: “Specificity breeds believability.”

“That’s something that is a big part of how I see the world and how I try to write,” Devine says. “To interrogate, to ask questions—I feel like that part of journalism continues to be a central aspect of what I do as a songwriter. If I had started [touring full-time] three years earlier, I would’ve missed what I got to do [at Fordham], and I actually think it would’ve had a detrimental impact on what I’ve done as a musician.”

Beyond academics and critical thinking, Devine says that he met many of his closest friends at Fordham, and he tries to visit the Lincoln Center campus at least once a year just to walk around or catch up with Stone over a cup of coffee.

“My experience at Fordham was formative and foundational in the sense that I feel like it furthered the project, in a very meaningful way, of exploring an idea of who [I am],” he says.

‘Navigating the Complexities of Personhood’

That exploration of the self is a central theme of Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong.

“What I think I’ve always tried to do,” Devine says, “is to try to capture what it was like for this person to be navigating the complexities of personhood at this given moment. That tends to be the project for me. Which is a fertile project, because I think being a person’s pretty complex.

“This record, I would say, is a lot of liminal subconscious examinations of pivot points in life, places where you are examining where certain defenses or survival traits may no longer serve you. The ways in which we could be trying to protect ourselves, but really [are] pushing people away. That weird dance on the head of a pin between, ‘What is a boundary that is healthy and what is me removing myself from things that are actually good for me?’”

And while none of the songs are overtly about politics or the pandemic, the album also grapples with how to make peace with oneself in a world of pain and suffering. When the album’s first single, “Albatross,” was released in January, Devine described it as “a hard reboot, a fragmented emptying-out for us strugglers whose life experience invalidates cookie-cutter solutions or miracle cures or 21st-century coping mechanisms.”

He is quick to point out that that “emptying-out” does not mean ignoring the suffering of others or forgoing responsibility for one’s actions.

“It’s not about an abdication,” he says. “Therapists talk about how guilt and shame are useless; wise remorse is actually a more fruitful way to move around in that which we have done, because it indicates a willingness to learn something and a way to detach from being completely self-lacerative. … What’s the most actionable philosophy to get through the day?”

Or, as he says about the meaning behind another album highlight, “Override”: “How do I get rooted while the Earth moves all around me?”

Staying Grounded and Returning to the Road

For Devine, staying rooted includes finding time to meditate and practice gratitude. He was raised Irish Catholic, and while he no longer considers himself to be a Christian, he says that his religious upbringing is “deeply embedded” within him and he still finds value in praying.

“Stopping in any given point in a day to say a few things for which you’re thankful and say a few things with which you’d like some help—that’s the guts of it,” he says of his prayer routine, adding that meditation gives him “five to 10 minutes a day where I’m separated from the noise of existence for that time.”

Another thing that grounds Devine—and that served as a point of reflection while writing the songs on Nothing’s Real—is being the father to a 6-year-old daughter, which he says is his “most important job.” When he begins a six-week U.S. tour in early April, it will be the longest he’s been away from home since his daughter was born, which he says has caused him some ambivalence, despite being excited to perform the new album’s songs in front of fans.

For many musicians, a return to touring after COVID-related cancellations will also mean a return to earning a living—something that has been difficult for artists who rely on playing shows to bring in income. Devine says that he has been fortunate not to face as much economic devastation as many of his peers, though, which has largely been the result of the Patreon subscription service he launched at the beginning of the pandemic.

“We’ve had such a miraculous success story with the Patreon,” Devine says of the service, which allows fans to pay a monthly membership fee in order to gain access to exclusive songs (both originals and covers), livestreams, discounts on merch, and more. “I have been really fortunate not to be financially ravaged by this, and it’s been almost [entirely] because of the Patreon.”

In monthly videos in which Devine answers submitted questions, it’s clear that he has a special relationship with his fans, who ask him everything from what inspired certain songs to what his favorite vegan meals to cook are. That loyal following is further shown by at least two people getting tattoos inspired by the new album.

Regardless of whether he continues to embark on tours as big as the upcoming one (“Maybe I’ll do it until I physically can’t. Maybe in five years, I’ll be like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’” he says), Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong proves that he has plenty of room to grow what has already been a long, successful career—one that has offered both him and his fans a chance to find communion in music during difficult times, something alluded to in a lyric from “Albatross”:

“If you’re sinking, sing along.”

Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong was released via Triple Crown Records on March 25. Visit Devine’s website for tour dates and more information.

“On the west coast of Africa, across the Middle Passage to the plantations of the U.S., the Caribbean, and Latin America, there were Africans trying to put together a cultural sensibility—a way of imagining themselves in the world, a way of critiquing their condition, and just a way of being a regular human and chronicling everyday reality, including humor, love, luck, and misfortune,” said Burnett, an assistant professor of systematic theology at Fordham. “They did a great deal of this through music.”

Burnett’s work explores how divinity emerges in Black life. He came to Fordham in 2018 after teaching in the University of Notre Dame’s Africana Studies department and Balfour-Hesburgh Scholars Program. He has shared his expertise at panels for the World Forum for Liberation Theology, the American Academy of Religion, and the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologies. This past summer, he served as a guest speaker on the podcast “We The Scenario,” where he spoke about the profound impact of his childhood church in Mississippi. 

“The Black church was very instrumental in dealing with racial oppression, but it wasn’t always so good with recognizing and celebrating the differences among human beings. It had a one-size-fits-all approach of what a human is,” Burnett said. “What I’m doing now is challenging some of the limitations in how the human is imagined in the world.”

In a Q&A with Fordham News, Burnett explains how his research and two different subjects—music and religion—harmonize together in his mind.  

You’re a systematic theologian. What does that mean? 

I try to understand and convey the relationship between God and the world from the perspective of marginalized peoples. When we look at the marginalized, we usually don’t ask them questions about what they think. Instead, as theorist Sylvia Wynter suggests, we look at the marginalized with respect to what they lack. My work critiques that. I explore how they think about the world. 

I’m particularly interested in groups marginalized by race, especially African Americans living in the U.S. I analyze the ways that they have negotiated life, despite the transatlantic slave trade, racism, segregation, and all types of contemporary injustice. One way is through music, or the sonic. As scholar of Black religion James Noel argues, Black religion emerges in the moans and shouts—the sounds—of a people trying to affirm their relation to an unspeakable experience of being turned into property and the unspeakable connection to a God (or gods), which suggest that a meaningful life way is possible.

How does music connect to religion in this context? 

Sound was important for Africans forced into slavery because it was quintessential to communication with the divine, especially in many West African traditional religions. Sound is how you communicate with the deity. It’s not just about entertainment or virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake. It has a function in communicating meaning, worship, and information. Sound also became a unifying way for enslaved Africans who could not talk to each other because they spoke different languages. They used music to communicate with each other. They developed spirituals, work songs, and slave seculars. The blues became a genre out of a transitionary cultural moment between what has been referred to as the “invisible institution” or “slave religion” and the formal institutionalization of Black American faith traditions. When the blues are read with respect to space, sound, knowledge, faith, and sensuality, we can see so much more than the musical genre that greatly influenced jazz, rock, gospel, rock and roll, pop, hip-hop, and other American musical genres. I look at this “more,” or the excess meanings in the blues, to consider how they play with, push on, and challenge theological ideas. My most recent book, Decolonizing Revelation: A Spatial Reading of the Blues (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), touches on this. 

Is there a specific music genre—perhaps gospel—where people tend to feel more closely connected to God? 

Yes. As historian Charles Long has argued, we can look to the worship practices of Black Americans as examples of how they gave meaning to their involuntary presence in the Americas, the meaning of God in light of that experience, and their ever-changing relationship with the continent of Africa. What they experienced was so tremendously terrible. It made them question the meaning of divinity. If something like this can happen, is there really any notion of the divine? Long and other scholars help us see that the answer to this question is an emphatic yes.

I read gospel music as a way of evoking and worshipping a notion of divinity that is indeed commensurate with “the agony of oppression and the freedom of all persons.” This notion of divinity is articulated through the Black American reception of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Gospels. It’s an affirmation that divinity is real—that God cares about us and that we can feel comfortable celebrating this, despite our conditions. Why? Because if you think about the gospel narrative, in the Bible, Jesus speaks to those who found themselves on the outside of love, care, and justice. 

What research are you working on right now? 

I’m exploring how the blues relate to suffering. I teach this in a course called Spirituals, the Blues, and African-American Christianity. What the blues is trying to do—and I’m thinking with scholars like Frank Wilderson, Saidiya Hartman, and Hortense Spillers—is to consider, in a more nuanced way, how the blues provides an alternative to the conditions that flow from anti-Black violence. While the blues are always more or less than what we might want them to be, it is clear to me that “blues people” are trying  to imagine another possible world. We see glimpses of that world in the momentary embrace of bodies swaying together on the dance floors of juke joints, in the moans and shouts of blues vocalists, in the spiritual imagination of hoodoo, and in confrontation and circumvention of the oppressive labor conditions of the Jim Crow South. As novelist James Baldwin once wrote, in the blues we find a “toughness” that makes the deep experience of pain in the U.S. articulate. However the blues, as Baldwin also wrote, does not stop with the reality of pain and anguish. It is also a representation of a deep sense of joy.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

A new music recommendation from Russ Borris, music director at WFUV, 90.7 FM, wfuv.org.

“Impossible Weight”
by Deep Sea Diver
From the album Impossible Weight
Jessica Dobson is a wildly talented guitarist who has spent much of her career playing on the road with Beck and recording with the Shins while putting out several releases with her band Deep Sea Diver. Her latest, Impossible Weight, is her strongest and most impressive work to date. The title track instantly hooks you in as she urgently sings the refrain: “But that was then, and this is now.” Her guitar work in the song is edgy and intricate, conjuring comparisons to that of St. Vincent. Throw in the welcome addition of guest Sharon Van Etten, who takes the lead on one verse, and you’ve got depth and dimension, making this one of the best songs of 2020, hands down.

If you’re worried you’ve exhausted all your Netflix options, look no further. Fordham News asked faculty and staff members for updated suggestions on the best things to read, watch, and listen to for the upcoming winter months. (In case you missed it, check out our last list of faculty recommendations here.)

Films

Jennifer Moorman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Media Studies

Vampires vs. The Bronx (2020), directed by Osmany Rodriguez
I know Halloween is over, but it’s always horror season for me! This one was actually recommended to me by a student in my Horror Film class, and I found it moving as well as fun. A horror-comedy focused on three boys battling vampires while simultaneously fighting off gentrification in their Bronx neighborhood (an issue that should concern all of us at Fordham), this film has so much heart. It has its share of cheesy moments and clichés, but overall it entertains while reminding us that Black lives matter, our communities are worth saving, and we are stronger together.
Available on Netflix

Bacurau (2019), directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles
This Brazilian riff on The Most Dangerous Game is a thrilling, powerful, anticolonial tour de force. Warning: It gets pretty graphic. But its messages about the dangers of globalization, imperialism, and white supremacy are as urgent as ever, and will hopefully inspire you to organize in your own community to fight the power. Its meditation on the ways that advanced technologies invade our lives and can hurt as much as they help is particularly relevant in this moment of ever-increasing dependency on digital (and specifically remote-learning) tech.
Available on Amazon

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), directed by Céline Sciamma
Arguably the greatest queer love story (or any love story, for that matter) of the 21st century thus far. Exquisitely shot, each frame is a painting. The compositions are breathtaking, the characters written and portrayed with unusual depth, and the story is incredibly moving and all too relatable for anyone who has a “one that got away.”
Available on Hulu

The Lighthouse (2019), directed by Robert Eggers
This is a great companion piece to Robert Eggers’ previous feature, The Witch (which I also highly recommend). It’s darker and more challenging, but also funnier. Its exploration of the horrors of isolation feels all the more relevant now than at the time of its release, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll find a biting critique of capitalism and toxic masculinity (and some would say, also a homoerotic love story).
Available on Amazon

Beth Knobel, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies

Broadcast News (1987), directed by James L. Brooks
This is one of my favorite films about television news. It’s also filled with classic moments that speak to the nature of friendship, success, and love. I’ve shown it numerous times to my Fordham students to illustrate the power and limitations of broadcast journalism.
Available on Amazon

Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1965 (1987)
Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965-1985 (1990)
Produced by Henry Hampton
Everyone who wants to understand the roots of the American civil rights movement should spend the time to watch Henry Hampton’s monumental, prize-winning documentary series Eyes on the Prize. Its 14 parts, produced as two series, explore the major moments of the movement, from school desegregation, to the fight for voting rights, to the elections of Black politicians in major cities like Chicago. It’s engrossing and important.
Available on Amazon

Brandy Monk-Payton, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies

Time (2020), directed by Garrett Bradley
This award-winning experimental documentary by Garrett Bradley is a beautiful and intimate portrait of a Black family that follows Sybil “Fox Rich” Richardson as she fights for over 20 years to free her husband from his prison sentence. Using interviews as well as Rich’s own homemade videos, the film is a brilliant love story in an era of mass incarceration.
Available on Amazon

Television Shows

Brandy Monk-Payton

The Queen’s Gambit (2020)
Based on a 1983 novel of the same name, this limited series is a coming-of-age story about Beth Harmon, an orphan who also happens to be a chess prodigy. Set during the Cold War, Beth defies the odds as a female player who gains widespread public attention winning in a male-dominated sport, while also privately battling addiction. Watch for the mesmerizing scenes of chess play.
Available on Netflix

Grand Army (2020)
This gritty young adult drama series is set in Brooklyn and follows a multicultural ensemble of teenagers as they confront issues of identity at their prestigious public high school. At times difficult to watch due to its themes, the film has vivid characters and stellar performances by the young cast.
Available on Netflix

Jacqueline Reich, Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies

My Brilliant Friend (2018-present)
There are two seasons available of this amazing adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s four novel series set in Naples beginning in 1945. Most of the actors are non-professional, and there are wonderful echoes to Italian neorealism and other film traditions. It is compelling storytelling at its best, and when we can’t travel to Italy, the series transports us there.
Available on HBO

Borgen (2010-2013)
Borgen is probably one of the most highly praised international television series in recent memory, and Netflix subscribers can now see it for the first time. It revolves around the first Danish female prime minister and her family as she adapts to her new role. You will be riveted. Also along these lines on Netflix is The Crown, with Season 4 having just been released.
Available on Netflix

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977)
One of the pioneering television series of the 1970s, Mary Tyler Moore plays Mary Richards, a single career woman living in Minneapolis. It was one of the first shows to feature work life and home life (modeled after The Dick Van Dyke Show, also starring Moore), and spawned several spinoffs (Rhoda, Phyllis, Lou Grant). I watched all seven seasons during the worst of the quarantine, and Mary’s sunny disposition and optimism were just what I needed. For a great companion read, I recommend the book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted by Jennifer Kieshin Armstrong, which tells the background story behind the scenes.
Available on Hulu

Clint Ramos, Assistant Professor of Design and Head of Design and Production

Alone (2015-present)I love it because it shows you how we really need socialization.
Available on Netflix

Street Food (2019)
It’s set both in Asia and Latin America. I love it because it’s not about the food, it’s about the people who make the food.
Available on Netflix: Asia and Latin America

Beth Knobel

Occupied (2015-2017)
This multilingual Norwegian three-season television series revolves around a Russian invasion of Norway over energy resources. As someone who spent 14 years living in Moscow, working as a journalist, I was glued to the edge of my seat by the portrayal of the Russians and the twists and turns in this biting political thriller.
Available on Netflix

Books

Heather Dubrow, Professor of English; John D. Boyd, S.J. Chair in the Poetic Imagination; and Director, Reading Series, Poets Out Loud

Detective fiction and crime fiction in general! Long-standing favorites include Sherlock Holmes and Ed McBain, especially the ones about the 87th precinct, which I enjoy not least because they are set in New York. 

Michael Connelly has been another favorite for some years—partly because of how the values of the detective are represented (he repeatedly evokes police work as a “mission”) and also because of how the relationship with his daughter has developed in the course of the series. But OK, I’ll let the cat out of the bag: I’m writing a critical article on Connelly, which demonstrates that I need to try harder to follow the advice I give my students about getting away completely from academic work occasionally. 

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
What an extraordinary eye and ear he has for English culture.

Seamus Heaney
Not surprisingly, I keep returning to Heaney, virtually any of his poetry books and prose too. 

Why I Am Not a Toddler by Cooper Bennett Burt
Given our troubled times I’d recommend for light reading, especially to people who enjoy some of the originals, the parodies of golden oldie poems Stephanie Burt claims were written by her infant son. One of my favorites there is in fact a riff on the Bishop poem that is itself one of my favorites, “One Art.” [Bishop’s compelling lament, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” becomes the kid’s “The art of mouthing isn’t hard to master . . . And look! my last, or / next to last, of three big crayons…”] 

Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America by Robert Bruegmann (Editor)
I love reopening and flipping through art books, including catalogues of exhibits to which I’ve gone. Art deco means a lot to me, and right now that bedside table also includes a book on deco mailboxes, a sub-sub genre of art deco design no doubt. And I often revisit a couple of books I have on the lacquer creations and other work of Zeshin—wow.

Music

Chuck Singleton, General Manager, WFUV

WFUV’s The Joni Project, which features artists covering songs by iconic singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell

Our Stress-Free Soundtrack pandemic playlist

The EQFM “Album ReCue” series, on landmark albums from women, which includes Spotify playlists of every album and Alisa Ali’s conversation with WFUV DJs

George Bodarky, News Director, WFUV

Everyone should have Nina Simone’s “O-o-h Child” on their playlist, especially now.

But really tapping into ’70s R&B has been uplifting, including “Shining Star” from Earth, Wind & Fire. 

Anne Fernald, Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Every summer, my family and I make a summer playlist. The rule is that it has to be brief enough to fit on a CD (so 100 minutes or so) and that it should capture the mood of the summer. We spend our summers up on the New York side of the Canadian border, listening to a lot of CBC 2. Their smooth-voiced nighttime DJ is a musician called Odario Williams, and his “Low Light (In This Space)” is a song that captures the hopes and aspirations coming out of #BlackLivesMatter.

Also on that playlist was Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto,” which is both heart-breaking and inspiring and just grows and grows on me. 

And I am always charmed by the Swedish song “Snooza” by Säkert! It’s (apparently) about urging your lover to hang out and snooze a little longer. It’s a very cheerful pop song in a language I don’t speak and one of those gifts from the algorithm: a “you might like” song that I love. 

Just a few days after Floyd, a Black man, died during an arrest in Minneapolis, with protests and calls for systemic change sweeping the country, Carter began texting with his longtime friend and fellow rapper, Franco Obour, about collaborating on a song to highlight their lived experiences as Black men and the personal and structural racism they’ve been exposed to throughout their lives. After three days of sharing lyrics and voice memos with each other and choosing an instrumental from producer eeryskies, Carter and Obour recorded their verses at a friend’s studio in Manville, New Jersey.

The resulting song, “What Do You See?” was released on June 12 on all major streaming platforms after initially being posted on Instagram and Facebook. Since then, Carter and Obour—a Rutgers dental student who performs under the name juneyouare and who grew up with Carter in Hillsborough, New Jersey—have received press from outlets including BroBible, Karen Civil, and Forbes. As part of its release, the two decided to donate all proceeds from the song’s iTunes purchases this year to Color of Change, a nonprofit civil rights organization that “leads campaigns that build real power for Black communities.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBVgECApRDX/

Over a laid-back, hypnotic beat that recalls the G-funk sound favored by West Coast rappers of the 1990s—like the often politically minded Ice Cube and 2Pac—Carter rhymes about both the frustrations of seeing articles and social media posts that downplay the racism experienced by Black people in America (“I do not come to a wake to debate what you been through”) and questions of ancestry and intergenerational trauma (“Look at my lineage/I’m a descendant of slaves/Somewhere in South Carolina/but I cannot find ’em/’cause they don’t have graves”).

“People seemed like they were losing track of the ultimate thing that happened, where this man lost his life and that could have been prevented,” Carter says. “It just felt very frustrating. It’s like, you don’t go to a funeral if someone’s relative passed and talk about, ‘Oh, well, we should be mourning my relative too.’ It’s like, hey, let’s focus together on what’s going on and try to fix it and find a solution.”

An Internship Becomes a Career

Carter’s interest in music dates back to sixth grade, when he performed with friends in a talent show, but he says he began to take things more seriously while at Fordham, where he majored in communication and media studies. After landing in the Bronx, where his father, Anthony—a 1976 Fordham College at Rose Hill graduate and current member of the University’s Board of Trustees—also studied, Carter set up recording equipment in his Loschert Hall dorm room (and later in O’Hare Hall and Campbell Hall) and earned a reputation as a musician on campus, getting invited to play at house parties, club events, and the University’s popular Spring Weekend concert.

While balancing his studies and music, in 2014, during his senior year, Carter also began an internship at the Robot Company, a sports and entertainment marketing firm founded by LeBron James and Maverick Carter. After completing his internship—the first one at the then-new company—Carter was offered a full-time position, and he has been with the firm ever since. In his current role as talent and influence manager, Carter works with brands, athletes, and influencers to find opportunities for collaboration.

A Growing Musical Platform, from NBA 2K to Australia

Meanwhile, Carter’s music career has continued to flourish. In May 2018, he independently released his debut album, Roadtrip, which has garnered more than 300,000 streams across major platforms. And this past December, two of the songs off Roadtrip, “G.N.S.L.” and “Pull Up,” were chosen to appear on the soundtrack for the hugely popular NBA 2K20 video game, appearing alongside both up-and-coming artists and established stars like Drake, Travis Scott, Cardi B, and Carter’s current favorite rapper, J. Cole.

“I grew up playing the game, and it’s still exciting every time [I] turn it on and hear my song come on shuffle in the background,” he says. “I would say almost every day, there’s someone new who DMs me like, ‘Yo, I heard your song on 2K. I live in London,’ or ‘I live in Australia,’ all these different places. So it’s cool to see that aspect.”

Looking ahead, after already releasing three new singles this year—“Made Men,” “Gassed Up,” and “What Do You See?”—Carter says he wants to continue to put out a new song every six to eight weeks. With what he calls “a vault” of unreleased music he’s been sitting on—and the marketing skills he’s acquired through his education at Fordham and his work at the Robot Company—he foresees having a promotional plan for each new song in order to gain continued traction with listeners. Having the ability to create his own media kits and knowing how to promote his music, Carter says, has made being an independent artist a viable path.

In writing and releasing “What Do You See?” Carter says he and Obour “had complete control of how we wanted to do it, where we wanted to put it out,” including the decision to donate proceeds to Color of Change.

With that kind of artistic control and freedom, Carter hopes that he can continue to inspire productive dialogue, saying that by releasing the song, he and Obour wanted to “make a statement and hopefully ignite a conversation.”

“It was just sending a message,” he says, “something I would talk about with close friends or keep to myself and trying to amplify that, knowing that there’s a platform that I have—and people, I think, would want to hear it.”

A new music recommendation from Russ Borris, music director at WFUV, 90.7 FM, wfuv.org.

“Hollywood”
by Car Seat Headrest
From the album Making a Door Less Open
Car Seat Headrest began as a solo project for Will Toledo about a decade ago. In the beginning, Toledo’s brand of indie rock was searing and guitar-driven, but “Hollywood” bears more resemblance to Beck’s Odelay (1996) than to Toledo’s previous work. It’s clear that 1 Trait Danger, Toledo’s more electro-sounding side project with drummer Andrew Katz, had an influence on the new album.

With the refrain “Hollywood makes me want to puke!” this track may not be your traditional song of the summer, but then again, this summer is shaping up to be anything but traditional. “Hollywood” is hooky and catchy and a completely fun listen that is likely to turn a whole new audience on to the music of Car Seat Headrest.

But on a Tuesday afternoon in April, Parker’s lab students used their own bodies–and voices–to bring their anatomy lesson to life.

“Those are your judges. Everyone, ready? Who is going to go first?” Parker asks.

“This is so awkward,” says Nicole Margiotta, FCRH ‘21 biology and theology major, as she stands at the front of the room.

Then the beat drops. Her classmates, many of them biology majors, start bobbing their heads to Margiotta’s original lines from her number Bones on my Brain.

Yo, Let me rattle your incus, your malleus, and your stapes

As we learn all the bones God gave to you and to me.

I’ll spit this knowledge straight from my cranium into yours,

So hang tight like a hyoid for this anatomy tour…

The live music competition put on by the students was part of an assignment Parker gave to engage them deeper in the material.

“I incorporate music in the classroom because, while I was learning, I felt something was missing. There is a disconnect in the way students receive information in academic settings,” said Parker.

Many of his students had never done anything like this in a classroom before.

“Never before have I had a music component for a college course, let alone a science class, so it was unique and refreshing.”said Nataliya Makhdumi, FCRH ’19, psychology major.

In the one hour of performances, the students found new horizons for themselves. Senior Noelle Chaney, rapped about her metatarsal to “Epic Trap Beat Dope Hard Hip Hop Rap Instrumental,” while sophomore neuroscience major Tess Durham, went for a full-on dance performance to a Kodak Black instrumental.

Junior Emily Haraden, a biology major, said that the competition was nerve wracking but worthwhile. “Making a song that made sense made us actually focus on something and figure out what systems and parts connect.”

Parker has been working with Christopher Emdin, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology at Teachers College on ways to make STEM courses more interactive and student centered. The focus for these courses has been on middle to high schoolers, but Parker felt college students could also benefit from a more interactive approach.

His students agree.

“It’s cool because it’s not structured like a normal lab would be,” said Aiden O’Keefe, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill. “You have a lot more freedom with what you’re doing so you can go at your own pace.”

Music helps students learn to express themselves to others, Parker said. Because of technology, students have access to a lot of content, but lose key social skills that are essential for networking.  

And, he said, the competition component is key. It requires the student to direct their words towards someone else. This help with composure and confidence.

“It also helps them direct their love, joy, or pain to someone else in an effort to be heard and understood,” said Parker. “Sometimes people don’t have anyone to listen to them, and my goal is to let them know we hear you, and so do your classmates.” 

Parker said he hopes these activities encourage students to think, as opposed to just regurgitating information. “My students are brilliant. I want them to have opportunities to be both creative and challenged in an academic setting.”                     

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Get ready to live it up in the Boogie Down.

It’s the Bronx, a festival that celebrates art, music, food, and hustle which the city’s northernmost borough is famous for, will kick off on March 23rd at the Andrew Freedman Home. The all-day event will begin with panel discussions with Bronx influencers, including Saraciea Fennell, the founder of #TheBronxisReading, and will culminate with a night of music and performances by over two dozen artists. The festival will continue once a month from May through October.

The preview event for It’s the Bronx on Jan. 26 at the Bronx Brewery attracted hundreds of Bronx creatives, entrepreneurs, art supporters, and food and beer lovers.

“It was an amazing and overwhelming experience to perform there. To be surrounded by so many talented people from the Bronx—it felt like home,” says singer-songwriter Mati, one of the festival’s headliners.

Mati has been performing since she was 12. Her music is a combination of rhythm and blues and Bengali Lalon Geeti. “I perform in the Bronx every chance that I can get. The crowd’s energy is different from Manhattan and Brooklyn.”

“This event is all about the “come-up,” says Marco Shalma, the founder of It’s the Bronx. “We want to get local creatives in front of larger audiences, engage with them to the highest industry standards, and put them in contact with decision-makers.“

The festival will feature the Bronx’s most notable “hustlers,” like Jessica Cunnington from News12, Amaurys Grullon of Bronx Native, Dandy In the Bronx and more. The main sponsor, the Bronx Brewery, will serve local craft beer. Jibarito Shack, Empanology, No Carne, and the Uptown Vegan will dish up local cuisine.

Also featured in the day’s lineup are a DJ turntable battle and a fine art gallery exhibition showcasing the work of local Bronx photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, and painters.

Shalma and his team have donated their after-work hours in order to bring this event to the community.  “Any profits for the event will be allocated toward a stipend for the team, a donation to the Andrew Freedman Home and the Bronx Creative Alliance, a non-for-profit we have been working to put together, to give the creatives in the community legal, financial, and admin support.”

This festival is just the start, says Shalma, who was one of the co-founders behind the Bronx Night Market. “The team and I like to dream big, wanting to get the entire city behind the idea of supporting up-and-comers. In three to four years? A qualifier event in each borough leading to a citywide weekend celebrating hustle.”